


Children of the Trickster

by madwriteson



Category: Colors in the Dreamweaver's Loom Series - Beth Hilgartner
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28207674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madwriteson/pseuds/madwriteson
Summary: The Feast of the Trickster has ended, and the world is back in balance. But for Vihena Khesst and Remarr the Minstrel, the end of their quest only brings them back to old worries and new questions.
Relationships: Vihena & Remarr, Vihena/Remarr
Comments: 6
Kudos: 3
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Children of the Trickster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mayhap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhap/gifts).



On a rush of wind, the Five found themselves outside of Eikoheh’s cottage. Karivet and Iobeh rushed for the door at once, flinging it open and calling for the Dreamweaver, Ychass close in their wake. But for all that Vihena longed to follow them, longed to pretend that she had not taken an action so rash it might have put her beyond forgiveness, she found herself hanging back instead. The Trickster’s hand might have guided her actions, but it was her own thoughts, her own fears and prejudices that had given the Trickster’s mischief such fertile ground in which to grow. She had done great harm to her friendship with the rest of the Five, and she did not know how to mend it.

Remarr followed as well, but hesitated in the doorway of the cottage, turning back to her. “Vihena, come.”

“I…” She wanted to run. To flee into the forest, to not have to face him, to not have to face any of them ever again. And she thought he saw it in her face; instead of entering the main room of the cottage with the others, where it sounded as if they had discovered some tragedy, he came back to her side and took her wrist in one hand. She shook him off, but he snatched her wrist up again, stronger and faster than she had ever suspected he could be.

“Vihena,” he coaxed.

“Let me go,” she said, jerking her head around to look away from him. She was on the verge of tears, and she did not want him to see.

“Running solves nothing,” he said calmly. “It only makes you a coward.”

She turned a fierce glare on him, tears spilling to her cheeks as she did. Remarr’s only response was a bland smile, but this time when she freed her arm, with a short downward jerk, he let her go. “Damn you,” she spat.

“Oh, probably. Shall we join the others now?” Remarr gestured towards the door of the cottage, that bland smile still on his face.

Vihena straightened her spine and dashed those unwanted tears off her cheeks with her fingertips, wiping them clean on the front of the strange shirt she still wore, an artifact of Tsan’s world. “I am ready.”

Inside the cottage, everyone was too busy to pay much heed to their entrance, other than to ask them to put themselves to work. Remarr was set to preparing a pot of kemess to cook, and Vihena to fetching pails of water and setting them to warm near the hearth. The twins were fussing over what looked to be a bundle of clothing and sticks, until Vihena realized that it was Eikoheh they were caring for, the elderly Dreamweaver faded away to a mere shadow of her former self in the weeks they had been gone. There, a wrist, painfully thin; there, a glimpse of her elderly profile, aged a decade or more. Now that Vihena was listening, she could hear the Dreamweaver protesting weakly that it was not so bad, but it was clear she had paid dearly for the assistance she had given them by weaving their fates on her loom.

Assistance Vihena had not believed in, assistance she had squandered, all because she could not leash her temper.

A hooded figure, tall and unfamiliar, was watching the twins at their work, but as Vihena studied him, he looked up, as if feeling the weight of Vihena’s gaze. He smiled, a wry little smile, but as kind as his face was, she recoiled from him. He had the fierce red hair of a god.

“Bedding,” Ychass said briskly, breaking the moment, letting Vihena tear her gaze away from that of the god’s. “Vihena, help me. I do not think Eikoheh has the strength to climb above.”

Vihena took to the task with a will, grateful for the work to keep her mind busy.

Some hours later, and the Dreamweaver had been washed and fed and laid carefully in her bed, tucked in a back corner of the ground floor of her cottage, a wooden screen put up to give her some privacy. At some point the god had left them, seemingly there one moment and gone the next. It must have been the Dreamer, Vihena realized, remembering the events of the Godsmoot in a strange, tangled way that felt like a dream, and which she feared would fade as quickly as one.

They were taking care of their own needs now, a deep, shared exhaustion casting a pall over what little conversation they managed. Karivet silently offered her a bowl of kemess and Vihena reached for it, her fingers pausing before she took ahold of it. “What do we do now?” she asked.

“Are you asking me, or did you wish to _ask_ me?” Karivet said bitterly, holding his free hand out to her.

Vihena flinched and withdrew, almost upsetting the offered bowl of kemess as she did. “Neither. I just…” she sighed. “I do not know if I can return to the Khedathi. Not yet, at least. They are the people of my soul, but… well…” To complain about the way they expected her to marry, to make herself of the clan in truth when they had so easily accepted her as foster daughter, seemed ungrateful. “I will never learn to control my temper if I return there now,” she said, not quite a lie.

“I think I will return to the city, to see how matters stand there,” Remarr said, taking the bowl of kemess from Karivet and setting it in front of Vihena. “You could come with me,” he added hesitantly. “I think your family would like to see you.”

Vihena doubted they would like any such thing, but for the first time in a very long time, she hesitated before voicing her opinion. Her instinct was to reject the idea out of hand, but her instincts had not served her well as of late... and she felt a pang—slight, but real—at the thought of being parted from Remarr again so soon. For all that she did not understand him or his form of honor—or of courage, such as it was—for all that they seemed constantly at odds these days, the threat of another separation made her realize how she had missed him during the years they had been parted.

“I will travel with you to the city. The gods might say that balance has been restored to the world, but that does not mean that the Tame Khedathi will behave as if it has,” she offered stiffly, lifting her chin in a stubborn little jerk. “Just let Edevvi try to mark your face again.”

“I would be happy for your protection.” The corners of Remarr’s mouth twitched as if he were trying not to grin, and though he did not laugh at her, amusement laced its way through his words. He turned to Ychass. “And you?”

The shapeshifter looked around the small cottage. “I think… I think I would stay here for a while.” She turned her attention to Karivet and Iobeh. “If you think the Dreamweaver would have me.”

Whatever answer she received was unspoken, but clearly what she had hoped to hear. All that was evident from the outside was a long, intent look, shared between the three, and a small nod of acknowledgement from Ychass when it seemed the matter had been settled to everyone’s satisfaction.

“That’s settled, then,” Remarr said. “May we spend the night?”

Vihena hoped that she had imagined the nervous way Iobeh’s eyes darted towards her, the way the girl flinched away. But Karivet nodded, and Vihena supposed that the matter was settled.

After all, she would be gone in the morning.

The next morning, Remarr and Vihena made their farewells. Everyone else was stiff and cautious with Vihena. True, no lasting harm had come to Iobeh or to Remarr as the result of her impetuous and violent actions, at least not physically… but physical hurt was not the only kind, and it was clear that it would take a good deal of time before the others felt comfortable with Vihena again

As for Remarr… well, it was not the first time he had received such abuse from someone he had thought a friend. It would not be the last. Growing up as he had among the Khedathi, a strange and foreign soul, he had received every form of abuse in the name of making him tough, in the name of making him a warrior. As Vihena had taken to that world in a way that had never been natural to him, he had found himself waiting for one of their verbal altercations to end in violence. Now that one finally had, it was almost a relief.

Still, he sought to mend fences where he could. He waited until Vihena was occupied by an awkward goodbye to Ychass and, with the pretense of saying his own goodbyes, he spoke to Iobeh. “She feels the hurt she has caused deeply, you know.”

Iobah’s mouth twisted, as if she had tasted something bitter. “I know.” She paused for a moment, frowning across the room at Vihena. “I am not certain I have it in me to forgive her yet, but I worry about her, Remarr.” She took a tight breath and released it on a sigh. “Her hurt—her fear—is so loud and painful.”

“Fear, you say?” Remarr let out an amused chuckle under his breath. “Since when has Vihena been afraid of anything?”

“She’s afraid of herself. Afraid of what she might do if she loses control again.” Iobeh pinched the bridge of her nose, as if she had a headache, turning her attention back to Remarr. “It may be too much to ask. But… if you could stay with her... I fear that if she is left to travel her current path alone, she too will be beset by loneliness and stalked by madness, as Tsan was.” The look Iobeh gave him with those words was plaintive, and impossible to refuse.

Remarr took both of her hands in his and squeezed tightly for a moment before releasing them. “If I can manage it, I will.”

“Thank you,” Iobeh said.

“Don’t thank me yet! Once she has spent a week or two among the Vemathi, I suspect she will find herself capable of returning to the desert after all, and will shed me then like a snake sheds its skin.”

Iobeh’s gaze was suddenly very intent on his face. “Then you would not go with her, if she asked?”

The flippant answer that would have been so easy on his tongue caught in his throat, and Remarr was forced to consider the matter in earnest. He found himself casting about for a glimpse of Vihena, his gaze finally coming to rest on her where she was now standing just inside the cottage door, obviously waiting for him and just as obviously impatient. “If she asked me to, I would follow her anywhere she wished to go,” he said, his voice suddenly raspy and desperate in his throat.

Vihena met his eyes and then Iobeh’s in turn, nodding awkwardly in the girl’s direction and ducking out of the cottage, clearly feeling as if she should not impose on Iobeh long enough to say her farewells properly.

“Take care of her,” Iobeh said when Remarr turned his attention back to her.

“I doubt she will let me,” Remarr responded with a sigh. “But I will do what I can.”

There was no Orathi woodsman to guide them out of the forest. Instead they took the old road, overgrown and rough as it was. Remarr had heard that the Orathi considered it cursed by the gods; he might have given no credence to such rumors, had he not made for this road and been overset by the Trickster upon it, just a few short weeks before. Still, they would become hopelessly lost if they chanced the forest on their own, and though the very emptiness of the road occasionally sent chills down Remarr’s spine, they encountered no perils upon it as they travelled.

The first day they traveled in silence, Vihena answering his forays into conversation with glares or grunts, until Remarr was eventually forced to give up or talk to himself. He had never particularly cared for riding, despite the skill that growing up Khedatheh had given him, but he found himself longing for mounts to cut this journey short. A pity the Orathi only kept goats. And the silence had its benefits; halfway through the afternoon, Vihena disappeared into the brush with a brusque hand-signal to stay there, and reappeared with a rabbit. How she had snared it, he did not dare guess, but it made an excellent stew for dinner.

The second day proceeded much as the first, Vihena only engaging in as much conversation as was necessary to make and break camp. The third day, it rained, or Remarr would have taken his harp from its case and would have tried to break the difficult silence between them with music. Still, even without its accompaniment, he found himself humming from time to time. A song came to his mind and stuck there—Dona Nobis Pacem, the round that Tsan had taught to them, so long ago—and he began singing it. The words made no more sense now than they had when Tsan had taught them, for all that he had the language of her world, but they soothed him all the same.

After the second time he sang the words, Vihena’s glorious contralto joined him, and a little bit of the tension between them eased. They walked together, singing, almost unaware of the rain, even when a gust of wind rattled the limbs of the trees that overgrew the roadway.

And then a third set of footsteps joined theirs. A third voice joined theirs as well, one that might have been like Tsan’s voice once had been, familiar and strange all at once, singing the words as if they no longer fit in the mouth that was singing them.

Remarr did not dare look back to see who walked with them. Tsan had been their friend… but the Wanderer was a god, and had been made a stranger to them both by time and the circumstances of her birth into godhood. So he walked, and he sang, and as the final round came to an end, so did those footsteps that followed.

He exchanged a confused and somewhat frightened look with Vihena, and was surprised to see his fear mirrored on her face. They both looked back at once, but the road behind them was empty.

“Do you think…?” Vihena asked breathlessly.

Remarr shook his head. “I don’t know what to think. But… if she wishes to wander with us, I would welcome her.”

“I just wish I knew if she was still Tsan in there, somewhere,” Vihena said, voicing the words that Remarr had only thought. “I... I do not think I would have become what I am now, if Tsan had been there.”

“She always did know how to stop us from arguing,” Remarr teased.

Vihena scowled at him. “If you took anything at all seriously, I would not find myself so at odds with you.”

“I take everything seriously,” he shot back. “I wouldn’t be alive if I didn’t.”

Vihena opened her mouth, and he expected to get some snarling remark about how if he were dead, at least that would mean he’d found something worth dying for. But her jaw clamped shut after a moment, and she let out a long breath through her nose. And then she lifted her chin and gave him an extremely superior look. “I would slap you, but I find you are not worth the effort,” she said officiously.

“Oh, you look _just_ like my mother,” Remarr said, without considering the words. And she did. That expression was pure Emirri, the expression she had started to wear when she had needed to deal with her disappointing son, once she had given up on making him a proper Khedathah.

Vihena’s eyes widened in shock and rage, and she made a swipe at Remarr’s shoulder that he nimbly dodged. “I do _not_!” she declared in an outraged tone.

“The very picture of her,” Remarr added, not knowing when to stop.

Vihena let out a shriek and flung herself at him. Remarr swung his harp case off of his shoulder and tossed it as gently as possible towards a grassy hummock on the verge before she hit him, driving him back against the trunk of one of the trees that overhung the road. Her fingers hooked into the front of the tunic he was wearing, clothing taken from the Dreamweaver’s stores, and she pressed him to the tree, the items he carried in his rucksack digging in to his back in several awkward places. “How dare you,” she said, clearly furious. “How _dare_ you.”

“How dare I?” Remarr laughed, harsh and bitter, still not understanding what had made Vihena so angry. “She is far more your mother than she was _ever_ mine. You might as well look like her.”

Vihena’s face twisted, and she loosed her grip on him, taking a hasty step back. “No need to remind me of all I have stolen from you,” she said, her voice just as bitter as his own was. “And the worst of it is, I am not even grateful for it.”

“Vihena?” he asked as she turned her back on him. Her shoulders hunched, and there was a small snuffling noise, as if she were crying, or trying not to. “Vihena, you cannot have stolen something that was never mine. I…” he paused. He could not say in truth that he did not envy her, but if he were somehow given the opportunity, here and now, to win his way back into his mother’s clan? No, he did not think he could bring himself to take that path, either. Not when there were so many years of hurt between him and them. Not when he had been cast aside as if he meant nothing to any of them. “I might envy you, because somewhere inside of me is still a small boy, searching for his mother’s approval. But I do not think I would know what to do with that approval now, if I somehow gained it.”

Vihena let out a watery laugh. “I don’t have it either, you know. I’m still… still too much of a _Vematheh_ for her.” She spat the word like a curse. “Too soft for the dry lands, even still, and all because I would not marry where I do not love.”

Those words sent a painful stutter through Remarr’s heart, one he resolved not to examine too closely. Instead, he made a joke of it. “Hard to believe a swordswoman like you doesn't have the choice of the clan, even if you are a soft Vematheh.”

Vihena let out another laugh, as choked and watery as the first. “Just one. And I imagine I’ll go back to Clan Khesst and marry him in the end.” She let out a sigh and swiped roughly at her cheeks before turning to the hummock Remarr had flung his harp case towards and picking it up. “It seems that being a Khedatheh comes with just as many expectations as being the daughter of house Moirre,” she said a little mournfully as she handed the now-damp case to Remarr, carefully avoiding his gaze as she did.

Remarr checked the case over carefully. It seemed to have landed gently, and the waxed cloth that his harp was wrapped in was no doubt doing its job. “I don’t know that it’s possible to escape expectations,” he said carefully. “Unless one wishes to forgo the company of other people entirely.”

“It is still a bitter medicine, learning that the freedom I longed for all my life is not so free as I had dreamed.” She sighed, and Remarr looked up, meeting her lost, sad eyes for a moment before she jerked her head away, as if she could not bear the weight of his gaze.

Remarr resettled his harp case and adjusted the straps of his knapsack, and started walking again. A moment later, she fell in at his side, keeping pace with him, and he shot her a side-long, teasing look. “You could always become a Wanderer.”

“If only!” she exclaimed, an almost-laugh in her voice. And then, again, a hint of longing to it: “If only.”

 _Yes_ , he found himself thinking. _If only._

It was still raining, when finally they approached the Vem. The city was always at its most beautiful when the rain had washed it clean. When the clouds parted for the sun as they were on their final approach, Vihena thought that it had never looked so beautiful.

It might never be home again, but it was still beautiful.

“Where will you go now?” she asked Remarr as they approached the gates.

He frowned. “I don’t know. I owe your father a great debt, though, and intend to repay him.”

“So you will follow me to my father’s home?” Vihena asked, trying to hide her relief at not having to face that reunion alone.

From Remarr’s canny look, she suspected he had caught some of it, but if he had he chose not to comment on it, or at least not beyond delivering the next with that teasing smile that was so often on his face. “I suppose I could do that.”

When they passed through the city gates, Remarr’s casual manner disappeared, replaced by an alertness and a tension that infected Vihena as well. It had been years since she had last been in the city, but she had grown up here, and she knew its rhythms as well as the beating of her own heart. There were too few people on the street for the time of day, even considering the rain that had so recently been falling, and the people who were out and about seemed strangely nervous, Vemathi and Khedathi alike. The pair of them made their way to House Moirre as quickly as possible, intent on getting off the streets.

There was no answer to their first knock, or after the second. Vihena began pounding on the door, a jolt of fear rushing through her and taking root in her heart. Had something happened to her family?

But over the sound of her pounding she heard the sound of footsteps on tile, and her father’s voice calling irritably. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

The door swung open under Efiran Moirre’s hand. Vihena’s father looked both exhausted and as if he were prepared to fight with whoever he found. Some small part of Vihena’s mind, buried very deep, noted that perhaps _some_ of who she had become had been influenced by the family that had sired and raised her.

“Father, is something wrong?”

His eyes widened at the sight of her, and Vihena found herself remembering the day he had first seen her as she was now, this flawless, beautiful face that was nothing but a pretty mask for the hoyden she had always been. “Vihena?” he said hesitantly, as if not quite believing his eyes. His gaze darted to Remarr next, where the minstrel was standing at Vihena’s shoulder. “And Remarr. Good to see you alive and well.” He ushered them both in to the house.

She found herself looking around the entrance hall in confusion. There was no sign of anyone else in the house, and the furniture within sight was covered by dust covers. “Father, are you _alone_ in the house?”

Efiran let out an irritated huff. “Blame the Lord of the City,” he said, a biting sarcasm marring his words. “I would much rather be at Moirresharre with your mother and sister and the rest of the household, but he has called me back.”

“And so you came alone?” Vihena asked.

“Oh, there’s a cook around here somewhere, and a maid,” Efiran said with a wave of his hand. “But truth be told I have not had much need for them. I have been in conferences day and night.”

“Conferences about what?”

Her father sighed, and leaned heavily against the banister of the sweeping staircase that lead to the second floor of the house. “A solution to the promises we have given the Khedathi, now come due,” he said, sounding very tired. “We have, perhaps, come to a compromise that no one is happy with, which probably means that it is fair. But it has been difficult work.” He waved up the stairs. “Feel free to settle yourself in your old room, Vihena, and I believe we can spare a guest room for you, Remarr. You will have to fend for yourself for the moment, but the rest of the household should be returning from Moirresharre within a day or two. There is to be a Gala to celebrate the treaty’s signing, and it cannot be anything less than sparkling and packed full of the most important families in the city.”

Vihena was bursting with even more questions, but being in her father’s house again had her falling into old patterns, not yet made unfamiliar by the life she had been living since last she had resided in this house. With her mother gone, it was her job to serve as hostess, for all that it was a role she had never taken to easily. “This way,” she said to Remarr, guiding him up the stairs, ignoring the startled look her father shot her.

Spare bed linens were still stored in the cabinet she had once chafed at spending hours inspecting, and the vast copper tank of water that was kept heated in the kitchen day and night to serve the family’s needs worked the way she remembered. It seemed that nothing had changed in this house except for her.

And her father, she realized with a start, when she saw him again at dinner time. She had not realized it in that first flurry of greeting, and he had been in his office since then, but now that she had time to study him, she saw that he had more wrinkles on his face and more grey in his hair, and he had a slight stoop to his shoulders now that had not been there before. Though perhaps that last was simply due to his clear exhaustion.

“Will you stay?” he asked Vihena, his voice as tired and worn as his face. “Just until the Gala. I know that…” His face twisted for a moment, before he got it back under control. “I know that you probably wish to return to Clan Khesst as soon as possible, but I think your mother would like to see you. And perhaps your presence, as both Vematheh and Khedatheh, could help ease tensions.”

Vihena snorted. She doubted that her presence would do any such thing. Like most true Khedathi, she felt a great deal of scorn towards the Tame Khedathi, who served the Lord of the City in return for the chance to make a life in the green land surrounding the Vem. She had no doubt that they would take such scorn poorly from her, Vemathi born, even if she had taken to the Khedathi ways.

“Do you suppose they are still hiring entertainment?” Remarr asked. “I know I owe you much more than the fee I would earn for a single night, but it would be a start.”

Efiran dismissed him with a wave. “I am certain they would be happy to have you, but enough with this nonsense of repaying me.” When Remarr opened his mouth to protest, Efiran shook his head. “Please! At least give me peace for tonight. I have spent the past week talking numbers and repayments and apportionments until my head started spinning. I have no wish to be faced with more of the same in my own dining room.”

“Very well,” Remarr said. “But _do_ you know if they are still hiring entertainment? I have several new ballads to present, and I would like a grand audience for their first airing,” he added, half a joke. But Vihena heard a hint of something else beneath the joking, the sound of a man proud of his craft and desperate to prove he was something more than what the world saw him as. She had known of that side of him, of course, but that desperation sounded as if it had only grown deeper over the years. But he had sung for the Gods themselves, and won their approval! Surely he could not care so deeply what the Vemathi lords and ladies might think of him.

“You will have to petition to the Lord’s house yourself for that information, I’m afraid.” Efiran let out a cracking yawn. “And I think I’m for bed.”

“I shall tomorrow,” Remarr said, a lopsided smile on his face. But Vihena heard determination in his voice, and determined in turn to follow him to the Lord’s residence on the morrow, to be certain he came to no harm at the hands of the Tame Khedathi. A few of them had eyed Remarr curiously as they had traversed the town, and Vihena had no doubt that if Edevvi were still in the city, word of the return of Hobann’s minstrel would make its way to her ears.

And if Edevvi came after Remarr, this time she would not find him such easy prey.

Vihena would make certain of it.

Remarr tried to sneak out of House Moirre on his own after breakfast the next day, but he found Vihena impossible to shake. So finally he resigned himself to her company as he crossed the city to the Lord’s house.

She had traded her borrowed Orathi clothing for the trousers and faded tunic she had so often worn around the city in the days before their first journey with Tsan. Remarr had not known her then, of course, but Moirre’s wild hoyden of a daughter had been just as notorious and easy to spot as Hobann’s tamed Khedathi minstrel, and he had known her by sight if nothing else.

Not that the Vihena of those days much resembled the woman at his side. The unnatural beauty that the Trickster had called a boon shone bright and leant a certain exotic flair to her features when paired with her current garb. She drew eyes wherever they went, and though she held her head high, it was clear that the attention was making her uncomfortable. Her hand kept going to her throat, as if to draw up the veil on a Khedathi robe.

“I could go on my own,” he said nonchalantly. “Surely you have better things to do with your time.”

“Like sit alone at home with my father?” she shot back acerbically.

He acknowledged the hit with a nod. “Still. I am not _so_ defenseless.”

“I suppose if Edevvi cut you up again, you would only joke about having a matching set of scars.”

“I doubt she would be so kind as to mark me symmetrically,” he responded drily. “But I find myself thinking that if the Vemathi and the Khedathi were able to come to an agreement, she must not have regained her position as Voice of the city Khedathi, and it was that power which made her truly dangerous.”

“If she was as angry as you said she was, no doubt she would attack you, power or no. Edevvi is good at holding a grudge.” From Vihena’s tone of voice, it sounded as if she were wondering if Edevvi would attack _her_ on sight as well. The woman had taken Khehaddi’s death as an insult as much as a cause for grief, and she had blamed Vihena for it.

“Ah, well, we can only hope that the new Voice saw fit to challenge her properly and put an end to her for once and for all,” Remarr said lightly, trying to shift the mood. Vihena smiled tightly at him, at least, and he took that as a victory, if only a small one.

The rest of their trip across the city was relatively uneventful, and the chatelaine at the Lord’s house took one look at Remarr and let out a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods you’re back!” the woman exclaimed. “A real musician at last. Half the orchestra took off in the last year, looking for more stable employment in a place that seemed unlikely to break out into open warfare in the streets.”

“You have a place for me, then?” Remarr tried to hide his delight. No doubt he would be disappointed; no doubt the Vemathi would treat him as they always did, with about as much interest as they would afford a talking dog, and the Khedathi would, as always, scorn him for finding his calling in music. All he could truly do was sing his ballads and hope that perhaps, this once, they would touch hearts and minds as he had always longed for.

The chatelaine nodded briskly, and he made arrangements with her to come and rehearse over the next week with what little of an orchestra she had been able to scrape together for the upcoming Gala. And the sum she named as payment, while a mere pittance in the face of the sum that Efiran had paid as ransom to the city's Khedathi on Remarr’s behalf, was enough that Remarr could at least repay the coin the man had loaned him to purchase a horse, and for Remarr to have a little left over besides.

When he gaped at the amount offered, the chatelaine laughed. “Supply and demand, my dear boy. The Lord of the City cannot _possibly_ hold a Gala with no entertainment.” Her gaze softened for a moment. “And beyond the skill you possess, you have always sung from the heart, even if those who listen are too deaf to hear it.”

Remarr left the Lord’s house thinking that he had, perhaps, been mistaken in assuming that his music had touched no hearts or minds among the people of the Vem. It was a heady thought, that someone might actually have _expectations_ of him.

He hoped that he could live up to them.

If Vihena had had her way, she would have dogged Remarr’s every footstep, following him to and from his rehearsals in the Lord’s house and keeping him safe from any Tame Khedathi who might seek to amuse themselves by tormenting him.

Unfortunately, the rest of the household arrived in Moirre House the very next day, and the expectations of this life overtook Vihena once again. Pifadeh Moirre, while she might look as delicate as a doll next to her elder daughter, had a strength of personality and a force of will that Vihena found it difficult to resist. She found herself dragged off to fitting after fitting, protesting all the while that it was only one night, and couldn’t they simply re-make one of her old gowns?

“Fashions have changed,” Pifadeh said briskly in response to this. “And so has your body. You need a new dress, and it needs to be one that befitting of a daughter of the House of Moirre, even if you don’t consider yourself one any more.”

Vihena heard the hurt in her mother’s voice and felt the sting of that rebuke. She had thought that her mother would be _glad_ that she no longer had to try and mold Vihena into the perfect Vemathi daughter she would never be. It had never occurred to her that her absence might cause her mother pain.

So she tried not to complain too much when she was subjected to enough fittings to derange even the most patient of gods, and her mother, in turn, tried not to complain too much when Vihena left the house in her old, worn training gear to meet Remarr halfway through his walk back to Moirre House after rehearsals.

Her sister, she saw little of outside of meal times. Anfeh was still as much of a brat as she had been when Vihena had last been home, and was still young enough to spend much of her time with a nursemaid.

Finally, the night of the Gala had arrived. Vihena had to give her mother this: the gown she had spent all those fittings getting just right was a work of genius, deceptively simple, all in white, with long, flowing lines reminiscent of the robes the Khedathi wore. And, most surprising of all was the fact that it felt as if she could actually _move_ in it.

When asked, her mother replied with an irritable sniff, “Like I said, fashions have changed. And the last time we made you a gown you couldn’t move like a swordswoman in, you ripped it in four places.” But when Vihena watched Pifadeh carefully for a moment, she saw the proud smile that her mother was struggling to hide, and found herself struggling to hide a smile of her own.

Less welcome was the lord’s ransom in jewelry placed around her neck and wrists, but Vihena thought she could bear it for one night, in this dress.

She tried to look in a mirror, but could only bear to for a moment. The woman who looked back was a stranger to her, impossibly beautiful and even more haughty, the true daughter of House Moirre. She knew that she would never become that woman, and as she glanced once more at that impossible reflection, the weight of the necklace clasped around her throat began to feel like a collar, choking the life out of her.

Tomorrow. She would leave tomorrow, heading out into the desert once evening fell, and she would be free of all of this. A life with Clan Khesst might have constraints of its own, but at least they were not _this_.

At dinner she was placed between two young Vemathen lords, men she might have once known the names of but had long since forgotten. They spoke very little to her, apparently preferring to stare, and she felt like a horse being put on display for buyers. _Look, here we have the daughter of House Moirre! Her gait may be a bit ungainly, but just look at the shine of that coat! What beauty she shall introduce into your breeding stock!_

The ridiculous train of her thoughts forced her to hide a laugh in a cough, and one of the nameless lords she was accompanied by offered to send for a cup of soothing tea. Fortunately, before she was forced to come up with some answer, he was interrupted by a low murmur of surprise that traveled through the banquet hall. “Is that—“ “Hobann’s minstrel,” she overheard from nearby.

Vihena looked in the direction of the musicians. There Remarr was, sitting on a stool in front of the rest of the orchestra, tuning his harp. He looked up and caught her eye... and then the damn insufferable man _winked_ at her, clearly visible despite the distance that separated them. She only wondered why for a moment; as the first notes of the ballad rang out in his silvery tenor, she recognized it as the one he had sung for the gods, the story of the Five's time in Tsan’s world.

A hush fell over the room as he sang, as if they were collectively holding their breath. More than a few of the lords and ladies in the room must have been remembering that time three years ago, when a Wanderer had come to bargain on behalf of the Orathi, a stranger not Orathen or Vemathen or Khedathen. As Remarr told of the strange world that stranger had come from, of the deeds the Five had done there, he held the banquet hall in his spell.

And he had added some verses. As he sang of the Godsmoot, and the Trickster’s choice, and the Wanderer’s birth, Vihena wondered at his rash bravery. So often ballads were used to poke fun at the machinations of politics, and minstrels often walked a thin line between plausible deniability and an execution. What revenge might Remarr invoke by exposing the machinations of the gods?

And what courage must it take, to love his craft more than he feared the wrath of the gods?

There was a moment of silence when the ballad ended, and then a moment when it sounded as if everyone in the hall had let out a sigh of longing and of loss, all at once.

“He is _very_ good,” came a voice from somewhere behind Vihena’s chair. She started and turned her head to look past her shoulder, meeting the eye of a woman in a blue velvet robe, so rich and deep in color as to be almost black in the candlelight and shining with silvery points of light. The woman—the Star Sower, it must be, she who sang the stars from the void—winked at Vihena. “Perhaps I should worry about him angling for my job one of these days.”

A wild look around the room revealed more of the gods, standing behind the lords and ladies at their banquet tables, apparently unnoticed by any but her. Her, and Remarr, who got to his feet and bowed to them each in turn under the cover of acknowledging the crowd's sudden applause, ending with a bow to the Wanderer, who was standing behind the Lord of the City and looking at the back of his head as if she wished it harm. And then Vihena blinked, and the gods were gone as quietly and as quickly as they had appeared.

She did not know whether it had been the presence of the gods or Remarr’s song, but some of the sullen tension that had been apparent between the Vemathi and the Khedathi at the start of the banquet eased as the night went on. And when dancing began, the two sides mixed more and more, matching the Khedathen Forms of Discipline to the more sedate forms of traditional Vemathen dance. Remarr sat at the head of the musicians, leading them in merry dance tunes that would work for both. Vihena found herself remembering that day in Tsan’s world when the two of them had performed together, strangely and beautifully in sync for that short time, even as she had chafed at the time at their lack of progress in the search for Tsan.

As to whether those memories made the night more of a torment or eased the passing of the hours, she could not decide.

The next morning Remarr was exhausted but exultant. He had known it a risk, adding the verses he had, but he was glad he had taken the chance.

He had not had the opportunity to talk to Vihena the night before, but now he sought her out. The gods might have approved of his performance last night, but he valued her opinion more.

He found her packing.

“Leaving so soon?” he teased, trying to ignore the way his heart dropped in his chest. If she was returning to Clan Khesst…

“Yes,” she said brusquely, laying out the poles of a small tent, perhaps large enough for one or two people. “I have had enough of this place.”

“I see.” Despite his best efforts, his current disappointment was clear in his voice.

She set the pole she was examining down deliberately, but did not turn to look at him. “You could come with me.”

“Clan Khesst is not exactly going to welcome me with open arms, Vihena.”

“They might.” She turned to look up at him, a fierce little frown on her face. “Emirri acknowledged you for Tsan’s sake. For mine, she might welcome you.”

Remarr doubted that his mother would do any such thing. “Do you truly want me to come with you?” he asked, holding her gaze. It might cost him dearly to go with her—after last night’s performance, he had no doubt that offers of employment would come pouring in—but if Vihena wanted him at her side, he would follow wherever she lead, and not just because Iobeh had asked him to look after her.

She swallowed hard and nodded once, a sharp, brittle sort of expression on her face, as if she expected him to refuse her.

“Then I’ll come with you.”

The relief that rushed across her face was almost painful to behold. Fortunately, Vihena turned her attention almost immediately to the gear in front of her. “I made sure to supply for two,” she said, sounding awkward with the admission. “Just in case.”

“Well, that makes packing a two person job,” Remarr said, kneeling at her side. “Let me give you a hand with this.”

“Why did you add those verses?” She asked as they worked side by side, assembling the gear that would keep them both alive in the desert.

Remarr considered for a moment how to answer. He was not really certain why he had, other than it had felt inevitable. “A cautionary tale, I think,” he said at last. “They might be tempted, in the days to come, to test the bounds of this new agreement. I wished to warn them that there is a new power in this world, a wild power, unbound, and that she had once been the woman they knew as Tsan, and if they sought to take rash actions to unsettle this peace, or to move again against the Orathi...” he lifted both hands in the air and tilted them, mimicking a scale. “The Wanderer might decide to bring things back into balance,” he finished, snapping them back to a level plain.

“Still,” Vihena said in the direction of the gear they were packing. “It was... courageous, exposing the inner workings of the gods to mortal eyes. Foolhardy, but courageous.”

“Are you saying I have finally found courage enough to impress the grand Vihena Moirre of Khesst?” he teased.

She shot him a glare. “I never said I was _impressed_ by it, Minstrel.”

“You wound me,” he responded drily. “And in any case, it was perhaps not so courageous as you might imagine. This is not the first time the Godsmoot has made it into song, and it will not be the last.”

“I suppose,” Vihena said, her attention on the gear once more. “But it was still a form of courage I can recognize. I do not think I would have dared,” she added with a shudder. "My courage is for things I can face with sword in hand, and I do not think my sword would be any threat to a god."

Remarr was mollified by this little speech, but he could tell that Vihena was stretched to her breaking point with that admission, so he did not press her further. 

By the early evening, they were bidding goodbye to Vihena’s family.

“Thank you,” Remarr said, clasping Efiran’s hand firmly in his for a moment. “I owe you more than I can repay.”

Efiran cocked his head to one side and examined Remarr’s face. “Well, if that’s how things stand between us, let me ask you this: have you given any more thought to that matter we discussed when last we met?”

Remarr almost flinched. He had considered Efiran’s offer of a marriage into the House of Moirre the mere ramblings of a father who missed the daughter his house had lost and who sought to find an outlet for his unnoticed grief. For the man to bring the offer up again, as if in earnest...

Beyond Efiran, Vihena shifted, clearly impatient to get on the road. Remarr found himself watching her as he answered, transfixed by the careless grace that came so easily to her. “I’m still considering,” he found himself saying.

Efiran glanced over his shoulder at his elder daughter and then back to Remarr. “So it’s like that, is it. Well, I wish you luck, son.” He clapped Remarr on the shoulder and leaned in close, delivering the next in a whisper. “It will be some clansman or another no matter what I say. I’d prefer you.”

“Sir, I—“ Remarr attempted to protest, but Efiran shook his head and cut him off.

“You’re still considering. Take your time.” And then, with a wink, he left Remarr and went to bid farewell to his daughter.

Once they were on the road out of the city, heading towards the dry lands, Vihena tilted her head to one side and looked at him curiously. “What did my father mean, the matter the two of you discussed when last you met?”

“Oh, so you heard that, did you?” Remarr rolled his eyes. “It was some nonsense about allying myself to House Moirre officially.”

Vihena frowned. “But how? It is not so simple in the city as it is among the Khedathi. It takes more than a clan leader accepting you as foster-kin in word to make you family among the Vemathi.”

“And don’t I know it,” Remarr said, trying to keep the bitterness that had surged up at those words out of his voice. “I took his offer as a joke, and one in extremely poor taste.”

“But what did he offer?”

“He, ah, intimated that if I should come courting Anfeh, my suit would not be poorly received,” Remarr said in a joking tone, expecting Vihena to find the idea as humorous as he had. After all, Anfeh was still a child, younger even than Karivet and Iobeh, and still as much a brat as she had been three years before.

But to his surprise, Vihena went very pale at those words, and there was a sudden hitch to her step, as if she had swayed slightly and then caught herself. And then suddenly all of the blood came rushing back to her cheeks and they flushed a bright, embarrassed red. But she did not respond in words; instead, she lengthened her stride and Remarr had to scramble to keep up with her, noting with some confusion that she seemed to be avoiding his gaze.

“Vihena?”

She did not answer.

“Vihena, don’t take it so seriously,” he coaxed her, a breathless hint of a laugh on his lips. “You know I would never.”

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked after another long moment of silence. “Haven’t you always wanted to belong here? Marrying into House Moirre could give you that, you know.” Her voice was tight as she spoke, and her shoulders tense. “An alliance with the daughter of House Moirre could make you one of the most powerful men in the city, disgraced Khedathi clansman or no.”

Remarr laughed properly at that. “Since when have I ever longed for power? I just want to be left to play my harp in peace.”

Vihena shot him a scornful look. “It would earn you respect, too, and you cannot say you have never longed for that.”

Remarr winced. A low blow, that one. He might have considered it, in the past. But now... “If I cannot earn that respect on my own merits, I would rather not have it at all.”

Vihena scoffed and picked up her pace again.

_Damn_. _Damn, damn, damn_. _Gods be damned, and me as well._ Vihena’s thoughts continued in this vein for quite some time, an angry litany meant to drown out the discovery she had just made and wished she hadn’t.

She loved Remarr. Loved him so dearly that the thought that he might marry her _sister_ , the thought that he might in one fell swoop become a part of the family she had been born to and be made forever something she could not have hit her like a physical blow, almost knocking her feet out from beneath her. She loved him, and she had treated him so ill that she did not understand why he was still here at her side. She loved him, and it would serve her right if he _did_ decide to marry Anfeh.

She loved him, and she had given him no reason to love her in return, and more than a few reasons to hate her.

She answered his attempts to start a conversation and tease her out of this mood with monosyllables, hating herself for it as he gave up and fell silent. But how could she answer him? How could she carry on a normal conversation under these circumstances?

She couldn’t. She didn’t _dare._ She was almost grateful when they began their trek into the Dry Lands, heading towards the oasis that Clan Khesst would most likely be near at this time of year; talking was a waste of precious moisture in a desert.

Not talking was almost as much of a torment as talking would be. Remarr could tell that something was bothering her, and he kept sending curious glances her way, along with curious questions in the hand-sign language the Khedathi used. She could only bring to answer him the same way she had answered with her voice, with brusque, cut-off signs that should have made it clear that she did not want to talk.

But Remarr never did know when to give up, and one night, after they had eaten and before they had finished setting up camp, he decided to press the matter. When Vihena set aside her bowl and stood, intending to go set up the small tent it had been a torment to share with Remarr the past few days, he stood as well. They had been sitting across from one another, each of them keeping watch behind the other’s back as they ate, and when he stood he was uncomfortably close to her.

She waited for him to step back, but he didn’t. He only said her name, low and concerned, so close that his breath ghosted warm across her lips in the pre-dawn chill.

Vihena kissed him.

It was a horrible, awkward thing, that kiss. She had startled him, she could tell, and confused him too, and so she withdrew before either of them had the opportunity to make it anything but horrible and awkward, certain now that it had been unwelcome.

“I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly, taking a hasty step back, and preparing to take another, only now Remarr’s hands were on her arms, holding her in place, refusing to let her run away from him.

“For what?” he asked, just as breathless. And then he bent that scant inch that separated their heights and pressed his mouth to hers once more.

This kiss was a great deal better than the first. Vihena had kissed Tedevarr when he had first begun courting her, relishing in the freedom of being Khedathi, the freedom to kiss and not commit to anything with it. A freedom she had been grateful for when Tedevarr’s kisses had been somehow lacking, even as he had taken it as encouragement to begin courting her in earnest. She had not understood then what had been missing.

Now, her mouth pressed to Remarr’s, the taste of him on her tongue, she did. She might not be able to put words to the difference, if pressed to it, other than this: when Remarr kissed her, she felt whole.

Perhaps he felt the same way. He certainly seemed as reluctant as she was to stop. But stop they had to, eventually. Even so, Remarr did not move far, letting his forehead fall gently against hers as they both panted for breath.

“We should put up the tent,” he said.

“And then?” She asked, lifting her chin in a challenge. She knew what she wanted, but he was harder to read.

He studied her closely, eyes very intent on her face. “Whatever you choose—or choose not—to do,” he said softly after a long, quiet moment. “I will not take what is not offered freely.”

“As if you could take anything from me that I did not want you to have,” she shot back.

Remarr laughed softly, acknowledged the hit with a tilt of his head. And then he became very solemn. “Still. I would not have you uncomfortable with me because you felt constrained to offer more than you wished to give. If you tell me no...”

Vihena pressed her fingertips to his mouth, silencing him. “I understand.” And then she removed her fingers and pressed another kiss to his lips in their stead. “I will not say no,” she whispered against him.

Their days passed very differently after that. Perhaps the pace they set was less strict than it could have been, but it gave them what they desperately needed: time. Time to think, time to plan, time to _love_. And if their feet lagged, perhaps the gods sped them on their way while they were not paying attention, for they still found themselves meeting Clan Khesst at the oasis that was their destination.

“Vihena,” Emirri welcomed her with a joyful cry. And then she glanced towards Remarr, her lip curling as she recognized him, her gaze moving past him as if he did not exist. “You have brought an outsider.”

“I have brought a member of Clan Khesst,” she insisted, staring the older woman down.

Emirri’s jaw stiffened. “He is no such thing. A person such as that one has no place in the Dry Lands, Vihena, and I will not take him back. Not even for you, daughter of my heart.”

“Then consider me no more of Khesst! If you cast him out, you cast me out!” Vihena cried. “Perhaps he is no true Khedathi. But he is the son of your body, just as I am the daughter of your heart! We are two halves of the same whole, and I am not complete without him.”

Despite the plans they had so tentatively made together, Vihena expected Remarr to voice a protest at this proclamation, to tell her that it did not matter whether his mother accepted him back into Clan Khesst or not, and she steeled herself against the disappointment that would inevitably bring.

Instead, he took her hand and squeezed it tight, standing tall and straight at her side. When she shot him a questioning look, he smiled a lopsided smile back at her. “You said once that I felt there was nothing worth fighting to the death for,” he said. “But you were wrong. To remain at your side, I would fight every warrior in this Clan.” That lopsided smile twisted wryly. “I doubt it would take long for my death to become the inevitable result, but I would do it, if this is what you ask of me.”

Emirri still had not spoken. She stared into the distance off to one side of them as if she could not bear to look at them directly, a heavy frown creasing her weather-worn brow, her jaw stiff, her bearing proud. She did not have the look of a woman who would easily yield.

“I see,” Remarr said after a moment. “It will always be your stubborn pride over me, then. Well. I expected no better.” He turned to Vihena. “Shall I fight them to prove my honor, Vihena?”

She met his eye and shook her head, firm and decisive. “That is not a fight worth your death.”

His eyes widened in shock. “So, then.”

She smiled, crooked and broken-hearted, knowing she would leave behind this place she had belonged so well, because she knew now that there would be no true belonging without him at her side. “So, then.”

“What now?”

“What else?” Vihena let out a sharp laugh. “We become the Wanderers our hearts have made us.”

There was a vicious gust of wind, a stinging slap of sand that left them both ducking their faces behind the sleeves of their robes for protection. After a moment, it died down, and Vihena lowered her arm from her face cautiously, watching as the rest of Clan Khesst did the same around her.

And Remarr was smiling at her, a smile so wide it warped that scar that Edevvi had left on his face, a smile so wide that his wind-chapped lips cracked under its force, unheeded. “I remember that face,” he said, his hand reaching up to cup her cheek, a calloused thumb rubbing across her cheekbone.

“Remarr?”

“I think the Wanderer has decided that you have learned what you were meant to,” he said softly. “And you have never been so beautiful.”

Vihena put her hands to her face, feeling her father’s square jaw, that strong nose that had so affronted her mother when she had begun to grow into it. Her face, _hers_ , the one that no womanly accomplishments had ever been enough to make up for, the one that did not belong to that too-perfect false daughter of the house of Moirre. And here was Remarr, looking at her as if he had never seen anything he loved more. “I think I could still learn more,” she said, her voice rasping in a throat choked tight with emotion.

“Then we’ll learn together,” he answered. “Wherever our footsteps take us.”

No one in the camp moved to stop them as they filled their waterskins at the oasis. And no one called them back when they left once more, though Fiorrah, the clan’s elderly storyteller, smiled upon them both as they passed by.

And together, they wandered onwards, neither Moirre nor Khesst, neither Khedathan nor Vemathan, a pair of colors worked as one in the Weaver’s loom, strangers wherever they went and always at home.

For home is where the heart is.


End file.
